2006/04/23

Alas, I knew you poor Horatio...


By now Matt had left the scene and it was up to me to pull the motor out. I had swapped a 350 back in the day so this wasn't to hard.
The right tool for the job is key. When I did the 350 we had to buiild a swing set looking thing and push the car out of the way when the motor cleared the vehicle. Then it was dropped in a wheel borrow.


As you can see, Clifford has been used to store lumber and the cases to the Beemer, among other things, for the last two years.

Head in a bucket...

Here is the head with the rocker assembly off. The whole thing is at a neighbor of Matt's. I understand he build race cars and has souped up the intakes, and valves. Or something like that. All I know is that Clifford will no longer crawl up I-70 at 45mph. If the power increase is enough I may pull the head off Megan's Corrola and have him work that too.



Here is the head in a bucket.

2006/04/22

Good Head and Bad Rockers

This is how I rocker should not look like. Uneven wear bad, camshaft bad. It was at this point I felt confident that the rebuluild was the right way to go. It took quite a gut-check to start ripping her up.

I am not quite clear, or at least I don't recall what all the top end of the motor does. Other than the crank shaft turns the timing chain which turns the cam shaft which turns the oil pump and causes the rockers to rock up and down. Why exaclty the rockers go up and down is still a mystery to me. What I do know is the need to be smooth as a mirror.














Here is the whole assembly with the valve cover off. In the foreground is the timing chain with the sprocket that turns the oil pump just infont of it. The cam shaft runs right down the middle.

We must start somewhere...

On the left, Mad Matt patiently explains to me that calling the valve cover a "filthy little whore" will garner no results. I disagreed.













In the end it turned out...



He was right, the valve cover was not a "filthy little whore"...








She's my little aluminum princess...

El Manifold

I look at this and, frankly, feel like throwing up. To the left is the fuel injection assembly sitting on the intake manifold (you can't really see the manifold though). To the right is the valve cover. All the tubes are vaccume lines, emissions voodoo and the like. We did our best to label every thing. The small lines were labeled "confusing" and the larger ones "inconvenient". There are some bolts under the manifold we labeled "piece-of-shit-mother-fuckers"

2006/04/21

Yea... it's gotta come out...

After 280,000 miles and over a year parked and lonely "Clifford" gets the attention she deserves. My good friend Matt (The Mad One), the all knowing poobaa of all things that blow most mortals minds, agreed to guide me gently through the complete rebuild of the 22RE.

All Clifford action shots are trapped in the world of paper and ink so I am unable, at this time, to show you the red beast in all his resplendent, rusted glory. I do have many pictures of Clifford's steel and aluminum viscera which shall follow as time allows.
I figured out who should be Bush's next press secratary:

Joe Isuzu

Penumili-Kikibobo

Dear Mr. President